This article compares the idealism underwriting both the survival of Odysseus' family in Homer's Odyssey and hybridity in Suzan-Lori Parks' Father Comes Home from the Wars (2015).

The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. recently announced that Professor Stephen Houston will deliver the 72nd A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts beginning in April 2023.

Congratulations to Professor Jeffrey Moser who is on sabbatical from Brown University (2021 - 2022) and is currently Paul Mellon Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, where he is working on his book Moral Depths: Making Antiquity in a Medieval Chinese Cemetery.

The Allure of the Ancient investigates how the ancient Middle East was imagined and appropriated for artistic, scholarly, and political purposes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Congratulations to Professor Stephen Houston (Anthropology) for "The Life and Afterlife of an Ancient Maya Carving", an interview he did for the series, "Getty: Art and Ideas."

Brown University owns a number of cuneiform foundation cones and tablets, which are kept in the John Hay Library as a part of Special Collections. Kept alongside the objects are various archival materials attesting to their previous ownership and acquisition by former prominent members of the Providence, RI community.

A multidisciplinary environmental history of early China’s political systems, featuring newly available Chinese archaeological data

Chinese Buddhist monks of the Song dynasty (960–1279) called the irresistible urge to compose poetry “the poetry demon.” In this ambitious study, Jason Protass seeks to bridge the fields of Buddhist studies and Chinese literature to examine the place of poetry in the lives of Song monks.

Parker VanValkenburgh is Stanley J. Bernstein Assistant Professor of Social Sciences in the Department of Anthropology at Brown University.

Congratulations to two of our PEC community who received Richard B. Salomon Research Awards for 2021:

Alani Hicks-Bartlett (Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and French Studies), for her project," 'Soutenez moi, li max d'amours m'ocit' [Sustain me, for lovesickness is killing me]: A Translation and Critical Edition of Li Romanz de la poire".

Jeffrey Moser (Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture), for his project, "Moral Depths: Making Antiquity in a Medieval Chinese Cemetery."

Congratulations to Parker VanValkenburgh who is the recipient of the William G. McLoughlin Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Social Sciences this year. Parker is Stanley J. Bernstein Assistant Professor of Social Sciences and Assistant Professor of Anthropology.

John Bodel and Stephen Houston, The Hidden Language of Graphic Signs: Cryptic Writing and Meaningful Marks. (Cambridge University Press, 2021)

John Bodel is W. Duncan MacMillan II Professor of Classics at Brown University and Director of the U.S. Epigraphy Project.
Stephen Houston serves as the Dupee Family Professor of Social Science at Brown University.

Congratulations to William S. Monroe, Senior Academic Engagement Librarian at Brown, who successfully defended his dissertation entitled "The Trials of Pope Formosus" on March 19, 2021 and officially received his PhD in History from Columbia University on May 19. Additionally, Dr. Monroe was nominated last year and elected early this year to a three-year term on the Council of the Medieval Academy of America. Well done, Bill!

This collection of essays on cultural astronomy celebrates the life and work of Clive Ruggles, Emeritus Professor of Archaeoastronomy at Leicester University. Taking their lead from Ruggles’ work, the papers present new research focused on three core themes in cultural astronomy: methodology, case studies, and heritage. Through this framework, they show how the study of cultural astronomy has evolved over time and share new ideas to continue advancing the field.

Published in Modern Drama.

This article argues that Suzan-Lori Parks situates metal discursively in Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) (2015) to highlight speculation’s emancipatory potential.

Published in History of Religions.

This article examines the history of yoga with attention to mantras and sacred sound. It argues that meditation on the syllable “om” at the moment of death, which is central to the construction of early yoga, has roots in a much older technique from Vedic sacrifice called the “yoking” (yukti).

by Sasha-Mae Eccleston, Classics. Eos READS for Black Lives.

The newest issue of the Brown Alumni Magazine features the cutting edge research of Laurel Bestock (Egyptology and Assyriology, JIAAW) and Sheila Bonde (History of Art and Architecture).

In Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies, edited by Suzanne Newcombe and Karen O’Brien-Kop, 502-21.